


shuffling cards

by lokidreamsinbw



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Fate, Future, Grief, IW SPOILERS, M/M, Magic, Open Ending, Past, Pre-Thor (2011), a chance to begin again, bending time, choose a different path, post IW, present
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 18:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14503020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lokidreamsinbw/pseuds/lokidreamsinbw
Summary: Thor grieves Loki. Can he do something to change their fate?





	shuffling cards

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a tumblr prompt fill for thorduna who requested a post IW fic that has the words blood grass and kiss in it.

##  _O N C E :_

 

“Give me your hands.”

“Why.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“So.”

They were sword fighting the day before, practice. Had a gigantic argument over who won. Some mean things were said. For Thor it’s easy to forgive and forget. For Loki it’s hard. Thor has to wonder sometimes if it’s because things said and done leave scars on Loki’s heart rather than his mind.

Thor manages to grab hold of Loki’s hands. He thinks it’s because Loki lets him do it. If Loki doesn’t agree to something he lets you know it. He hurts you to make you understand.

Thor submerges Loki’s hands into the golden basin. The water comes bubbling up. Swishes around their wrists, tumbles over their knuckles.

Thor turns Loki’s hands over, palms facing up. Spots the cut. Moves his thumb over the sliced skin at the base of Loki’s forefinger. Blood peels off Loki’s palms; wisps of it come floating upwards and when they reach the surface they spread across the water like a muted sunset.

Thor looks at Loki, wondering how he got injured. He knows better than to ask, though. Loki won’t tell.

With the water pushing against the sliced flesh the cut rapidly stops bleeding.

Thor starts scrubbing the blood off his little brother’s hands using his fingers, gently and efficiently.

The clear sound of splashing water filling the silence between them.

Loki watches the water turning pink.

“How did you know.”

“How did I know what.”

“That it was _my_ blood.”

Thor chuckles, amused, as he gets rid of the used water and starts refilling the basin, “whose blood could it be?”

Loki blinks at the slowly filling basin, dripping hands resting on a cloth on the table so he won’t dot the floor with red.

“Father said—”

Another blink.

“—that I am capable of evil deeds.”

Thor huffs. Puts the jug away.

Taking hold of Loki’s hands again he confidently says: “nonsense.”

Thor scrubs, thumbs running over knuckles and veins and tendons.

Then Loki’s voice, inquiring quietly, “whose hands are those.”

Thor pauses, thumbs pressed into Loki’s palms.

Loki spreads out his fingers. Slivers of light skitter all over his hands.

“They’re not mother’s hands. Not father’s,” Loki says.

Thor’s hands come up to cradle Loki’s lightly.

“Those are my brother’s hands,” he says and when Loki looks up at him Thor can see he looks touched.

Thor refills the basin for the third time.

He keeps scrubbing but the water stays clean.

“Father said that when a hero dies, each drop of blood that falls from him is a life he helped preserve,” Loki muses.

Thor pats Loki’s hands dry. And he thinks Loki could have healed himself using magic, yet he came to him instead.

“Father says many things,” Thor says, “some of them are true.”

 

##  _N O W :_

Thor is lying on the sun-scorched grass, Wakanda’s poppy-colored skies over his head.

He’s been walking for days, weeks, years.

Collapsing onto the ground felt weightless.

Some of his toes are broken. His ankles throb. Inside his chest his heart is a sandstorm.

The dry winds smeared the tears across his cheeks, into his beard, into the sun-kissed hair at his temples; some they gathered to water the thirsty ground with.

There’s dirt in his hair, streaks of it running down his face—a sign of grieving.

His eyes are half-way open. He’s staring into the red glow that grows between the sparse trees. The red hums like a breathing flame.

In this light the ground looks like a mix of pear and peach skins.

And a voice in Thor’s head, so many beautiful words and no mouth to speak them.

_Imagine. Being the first two living forms to walk from one end of an unknown land to another._

Thor stares into the distance. The land stretches before him.

Some time before he fell, Thor saw a dying lion—raspy, uneven breaths taken under the scorching sun, foaming at the mouth. Its fur reflected the daylight and its low cries rattled the branches.

Thor closes his eyes.

Falls asleep for a while.

And then a hushed _drip!_

Thor curls his good arm close to himself out of instinct because of this thought that makes no sense to him _what if it’s going to rain._

_Drip!_

Behind his closed lids, Loki’s eyes saying goodbye to him against the backdrop of the destroyed spaceship.

Thor lifts up his eyes without moving his head.

The skies are clear.

_Drip!_

A shadow over Thor’s face.

Then the touch of hands on his face, cradling, cool.

His brother’s hands.

Thor whispers Loki’s name over and over again. He gasps into Loki’s mouth as it presses down against his.

He’s kneeling next to Thor’s head and his hands leave bloodied prints on the sides of Thor’s face.

Thor looks up into Loki’s eyes, tears trickling into his hair.

Behind them the grass Loki walked on is tinted rusty-red.

 

##  _L A T E R :_

Thor shakes his head suddenly.

Blinks his eyes hard.

There’s an orb swirling before him glowing orange in the dark.

“Well,” a voice says as the tent flutters in the wind around them, “you have paid to see your future, ambitious prince. Are you satisfied with what you’ve seen?”

Thor glances around, eyes darting fearfully from one shadow to another.

Takes him a few moments to remember how he stepped inside this magician’s tent; how Loki insisted on waiting outside because cheap tricks bore him; how the bearded man had offered him a glimpse into his future in exchange for some gold coins.

 _A trick, it must be_ Thor wants to say. Yet his heart tells him it isn’t, and the thought horrifies him.

Thor tosses the coins onto the table. They go flying everywhere, blinking gold and he stumbles backwards, pushing a chair out of his way before he pushes past the tent’s flaps.

Asgard is celebrating Odin’s reign in colors and music all around.

Thor spots Loki sitting on a stone ledge, toying with a deck of cards that tell you the future if you can only read them. His hair is shorter, his face boyish.

They’re young again and in a little while they’ll have to hurry back to the palace to join their parents for the royal feast.

 _Their_ parents.

Thor’s eyes move over Loki sadly. The things Loki doesn’t know yet and is to discover. The truth that will change everything.

And he thinks of Jotunheim. Thor’s pride will bring them there, it’ll make it possible for Loki to witness his skin changing color, will make him doubt, will make him seek the Infinity Stone, will make Odin tell him the truth about who he is.

And Thor thinks if they stay out of Jotunheim, maybe—

“Thor, come here!”

Loki smiling at Thor brightly, playfully.

Thor walks up to him, watches as Loki shuffles the cards.

Thor spots the scar there at the base of Loki’s forefinger.

_My brother’s hands._

“Pick a card.”

Thor touches the back of one card.

Loki pulls it out of the deck, holds it up for Thor to see.

It’s Fate.

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me on tumblr 
> 
> https://lokidreamsinbw.tumblr.com/


End file.
